PowerGoals / Chapter 6 / Part 1

The Ten Environments of You.

Even though it is important to reverse-engineer the transformational process, as I've explained in the previous chapter. You start acting from your present reality, in other words, your environment.

If you are not consciously creating an environment that aligns with your PowerGoal? and the other levels of transformation, your environment will keep you stuck. Many people get tripped up by their environment. They do not understand how powerful the influence of their environment is, and they do not recognize all the environments that are influencing them. So they stay stuck.

However, the opposite is also true: there is immense power in taking control of your environment. Changing one small area of your life changes everything else.

The?ten?environments.

I learned the framework in this chapter from the late Thomas Leonard. He is widely recognized as the founding father of the life coaching industry. Thomas Leonard taught about the nine environments of you. Because I recognized the major role that technology is playing in my life and those of others, I took the liberty to add it to those of Thomas Leonard. These ten environments – the nine originals plus technology – provide a framework for you to think about all the areas of your life and how they influence you.

Working with these ten environments also allows you to focus on the specific ones that you need to change to set you up for success.

The picture below shows the ten environments.

Everything starts with you right in the centre. When I am referring to?you, I am not referring to your body. Most people associate themselves with their bodies. They think it is who they are, which is not the truth. When I say?you, I am talking about the energetic you, your soul, the part that continues after death.

Part of that?you?are your memetics. Your memetics is your inner world: your metaprograms, thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, and so forth. In other words, it is everything that happens within you, most of it unconsciously.

Then you get the outer world – the spokes in the graphic above that touch your memetics.

The outer world consists of the rest of the ten environments: the self, the spiritual, the relational, networks, the financial, the physical, nature, technology, and the body.

Key?principles.

Before we dive deeper into each environment, there are five key principles that govern our environments that we need to understand.

The first principle is that?everything?is?an?environment.

The word?environment?is used in different ways by different people in different contexts. It is often used to refer to nature. For example, we say that the environment, meaning nature, is suffering because of pollution.

We also use it to refer to physical space. For example, you might speak about your?home?environment?or your?work?environment. It is not wrong to do so, but there is some ambiguity when you use it this way. You might be referring to the physical space, like the desks and couches and coffee cups and so forth. You might also be referring to the relationships that you have there, and even to your thoughts and feelings about what happens there. You might, therefore, think of it as a?positive?or a?negative?environment.

None of these uses is wrong. But in the context of how we are using the word here, an?environment?refers to one of the areas of the current reality of your life. There are ten environments so we can isolate and talk about each one.

In the example of your office, there are different environments at play. The physical environment at your office is the desks and the chairs and the building. Your memetics, or your thoughts and inner dialogue, about the office is another environment. Then there are the relationships and networks at your office, two more environments. We use the word?environment?to refer to one of these things so that we can isolate them. Because everything is an environment, everything is part of one of the ten environments.

The second principle is that?everything?is?energy. I go into more detail about the science that has proven this principle in Chapter 10, but, in short, science shows that all matter is essentially energy. Applied to our lives, this principle means that something is either giving you energy and moving you closer to your goals, or it is draining your energy and keeping you further away from your goals.

The third principle is that?all?environments?are?connected. Another way to put it is that they are intertwined. We are only labelling our environments to make it easier for us to think about them and take action to change them. In reality, everything is energy and therefore connected. If you walk into your physical office space, you are in that physical environment, but you are also in that relational and network environment at the same time. And, of course, you have thoughts and feelings about all of those things. They are interconnected. The great thing about this principle is that if you change just one aspect of an environment, it affects all the other nine environments.

The fourth principle is that?your?environment?is?always?stronger?than?your?willpower. I have touched on this principle in the previous chapter, and I explain the science behind it in Chapter 9. If your environments are not aligned with your PowerGoal?, you will be swimming upstream, and you will get tired. You cannot swim upstream every moment through willpower. Your environments will override your willpower. Eventually, you will grow tired and give up. One of the major reasons why people do not achieve their goals is because they rely on their willpower to do it.

But some of you can experience a significant breakthrough right now if you take hold of this principle. You have been relying on your willpower, and it has been letting you down. Instead of relying on your willpower, find the stumbling blocks in your environments and remove them.

Workbook?Q6.1:?Have?you?been?trying?to?reach?your?goals?through?willpower?

Follow?the?prompts?in?the?PowerGoal??Workbook?to?reflect.

The fifth principle is that?if?the?outside?world?is?not?in?alignment?with?the?inner?world?or?vice?versa,?it?causes?friction?or?conflict. Many people do not achieve their goals because they self-sabotage themselves, often subconsciously. I have seen it many, many times. Self-sabotage happens because you are trying to achieve something in the outer world, but it does not align with what you actually believe on the inside. Your mind subconsciously comes up with ways to protect you from what it sees as bad or undesirable and keeps you from reaching your goal.

The opposite can also happen. You firmly believe something, for example, that debt is bad and that you never want to make any debt. But in the environments of your outer world, you are constantly being told that debt is good and normal. The people closest to you have debt. You walk into their houses, and most of their possessions were acquired using debt. The financial systems which you rely on are built on debt.

The friction between what you believe in the inner world and your outer environment will cause one of two things. Your inner world will conform to your outer world. You will start telling yourself that debt is not so bad, that there are certain types of debt that are good, or that this one specific reason for making debt is good and noble even. You will make debt and believe that it is the right thing to do.

The second thing that might happen is that you start distancing yourself from those environments. You will visit those friends less often and make new ones. You will tell the bank not to phone you again to sell you their latest credit card. You will pay cash for your purchases, and every time you look at them, you will know that you did so and that it is possible.

If you are experiencing inner conflict, it is likely that your inner and outer worlds are not aligned. You need to ask yourself whether you are trying to achieve something which is conflicting with what you believe deep down inside. You might need to work on your inner world, your memetics. You might hold some beliefs that are holding you back.

It could also mean that your outer world is in conflict with what you value and that you need to make some changes there. Perhaps you need to spend less time with certain people and more time with others. Perhaps you need to go so far as to change jobs or careers. This fifth principle is a great gift that allows us to recognize and remove obstacles in our path to achieving our PowerGoal?.

Workbook?Q6.2:?Are?you?experiencing?inner?conflict?

Follow?the?prompts?in?the?PowerGoal??Workbook.

Now that you know these five principles, let us look closer at each of the ten environments of you.

Memetics.

The word?memetics?comes from the Latin word?meme.?A?meme?refers to a unit of social information that identifies beliefs and ideas and that is transmitted from one person or group of people to others. Your memetics includes your beliefs, values, ideas, thoughts, and cultural norms. It is the lens through which you view the world. It is the way through which you change your outer world into your inner world. Memetics includes your beliefs, values, ideas, thoughts, and cultural norms. It is the lens through which you view the world. It is the way through which you change your outer world into your inner world.

Our senses allow us to see, feel, taste, hear and smell. Through those senses, we convert the outer world into thoughts. Those thoughts lead to feelings and to emotions which, in turn, lead to our actions which become habits. Our actions and habits lead to our results. In the diagram, all the other environments touch our memetics because our memetics is linked the closest to each of those environments. Our inner world relates to each of the environments that make up our outer world.

Many people think that they are their thoughts and feelings. Like they think they are their body, they think they are their memetics. The great news is that that is not the case. If your memetics is the programs that you run about life, you are the programmer. You are the creator. You get to choose. You can change your beliefs and design the life that you want.

The fact is your memetic environment, in other words, your ideas, values, thoughts, beliefs, paradigms, and habits have been passed down from generation to generation. Unless you step up as the programmer and start changing your memetics, you will probably have the same kind of life as your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Some years ago, I wanted to do a second Ph.D. I felt very strongly that poverty is a man-made creation and that if it is manmade, we can unmake it. But I ran into a serious problem, so big that I decided to let go of the Ph.D. I realized that I could not help the majority of people because of these belief systems that are passed on. The sad thing is that the poorest of the poor have been poor for generations. Unless a person is willing to let go of that belief system of poverty that has been ingrained into them by their environment their whole life, they will not get out of poverty. It is certainly possible to get out of poverty, but it depends on the person. And very few people are willing to let go of these ingrained belief systems because all their environments work against them.

Your memetic environment also includes information like your knowledge, the books and magazines you read, the websites you visit, and the movies and television that you watch. One thing I would love you to do is to give up television completely, especially news. If you watch it, you are allowing yourself to be programmed, mostly with negative propaganda. Almost all television is based on beliefs about life that I do not want. The media industry wants you in a negative state of mind because then they can control you. If they can get you in a state of fear about some catastrophe that has no or very little impact on your life, you will keep on buying their products to keep informed about this thing that you think is so important.

You don’t have to give up television. It is your choice. But one of the first things I would do to improve my memetic environment is to cut out television completely. Instead of the time that you spend watching these things, doing courses, or reading positive books. Put knowledge and thoughts into you that are aligned with whom you want to be. It is part of being the programmer, the designer of your own life. Watching television is also an act of design, but you are giving the programming rights over to someone else, and you need to think about what they are programming into you.

This life that you’ve got is by design. It is not by default, except if you give up your right to design and hand it over to others. That is where the problem lies for many people. You have to take responsibility. We are conditioned not to take responsibility. The financial and political powers do not want us to take responsibility. They want us to be dependent on them so that they can profit from us. But one of the traits of a true wealth creator is to take full responsibility for all our actions. Then you do not have to accept the status quo of most people’s lives. You can design your own, as long as you take up the responsibility.

My passion is to show people that they have the power to make all their dreams come true simply by taking that responsibility. I, therefore, want you to take some time to meditate and think about this environment. Ask yourself,?What?is?my?memetics??What?do?I?believe??How?do?these?ideas?impact?my?PowerGoal???Is?it?helping?me?move?forward?or?not?

Take responsibility to create a memetic environment that will serve you.?How?can?I?program?myself??How?can?I?stop?allowing?outside?forces?to?program?for their?good?rather?than?mine?

Take responsibility to create a memetic environment that will serve you.

Workbook?Q6.3:?Take?stock?of?your?memetics.

Follow?the?prompts?in?the?PowerGoal??Workbook.

Self.

The second environment is the self. It includes your strengths, talents, personality, passions, and skills.

One aspect of this environment is about truly knowing yourself. If you know yourself, you can redesign the rest of your environments with this knowledge to be in alignment with our goals. If you are a skilled copywriter, you can use this skill to make money in your financial environment to get closer to your goals. If you are an extrovert who loves people, you can use that characteristic to build your network in the areas that are important to you. If you are passionate about problem-solving, you can use it to solve technical problems that you and those you know have and even build a business around it.

If you do not know yourself, you are much more likely to set yourself up for failure. If you start a business selling copywriting services, but you do not know a thing about copywriting, and you do not take responsibility for learning about it, you are probably setting yourself up for failure – no matter if someone else made money with their copywriting business.

The great thing about the self environment is that you were not born with all the skills and passions or even personality traits that you will ever have. You can develop yourself. You can learn new skills and become passionate about things that previously bored you. You can even develop your personality.

For example, many of my students start with no interest in having their own business. They tell themselves that it is not their strength, that it goes against their personality, and that they do not have the ability to learn the skills of sales or finances or whatever it is that they see as a stumbling block. But on their journey to their goals, they start seeing that business can be a powerful tool to get them there, not only financially but also to have freedom. So, they begin learning the skills. As they apply the skills and see results, they become more passionate about business. Someone who is a timid, introverted person becomes much more confident as they see what they are capable of.

Never limit yourself to what you can currently do and who you think you currently are. Yes, be honest about what you can do and who you are now, but also challenge yourself to grow and be more.

Workbook?Q6.4:?What?do?you?bring?to?the?table?to?get?to?your?PowerGoal??

Spiritual.

The next environment, the spiritual, is very important to me. Because of its negative connotations, many people do not pay a lot of attention to it.

The spiritual environment includes our connection to a higher power – God or Spirit or the Universe. It is that invisible connection that we feel towards other people and the universe. It is where all our energy comes from. It also includes our spiritual practices. Because we are, in essence, spiritual energy first and foremost, we can tap into low spiritual energy or higher spiritual energy. The effect makes all the difference.

The emotions we experience are generated by our spirituality. In the same physical environment, you can experience overwhelm, clutter or fear. Or you can experience peace, calm, and joy. Your state of being is not dependent on your physical environment or any of the other environments. It is dependent on your spirituality.

Religions form to help us with our spirituality. Many people think that spirituality is a religion and vice versa, or that it is the specific religion that they have been exposed to. But religion is not spirituality. It is there to help you in the process. You might follow a certain religion or spiritual practices already, or you might not. If you do, become aware of what those practices are and what their effects are.

Also, become aware of your connection to a higher power in life, however, you think of it. Many people are completely numbed to this reality in their life, so they find it hard. Use some of the other environments to get you started – spend time in nature and become aware of what you feel inside of yourself. Talk to someone whom you see as a spiritually aware person and check what is stirring inside of you. A spiritual practice that I find extremely valuable is meditation. There are many kinds of meditation and different ways to do it. If you want to explore it, find one which resonates with you. Over time, your meditation, like many of your spiritual practices, might change. That is normal and good.

Do not neglect the spiritual. It is a powerful transformation source to tap into.

Workbook?Q6.5:?Grow?your?spirituality.

Follow?the?prompts?in?the?PowerGoal??Workbook.

Relational.

The fourth environment is relational. The relational includes those people in our lives who are closest to us and with whom we have intimate connections. These might be our family, close friends, close colleagues, mentors, and neighbours. They are people with whom we spend our time and with whom we share our lives.

The people in your life act as mirrors to some part of yourself. We become like the people with whom we spend time. It is a powerful revelation if we are willing to accept it. You might be spending a lot of time with negative people, those whom I sometimes call?energy?vampires. Simply by removing yourself from that environment, that is, by spending less time with those people or breaking the relationships completely, everything can change in your life. Immediately your life will start to change for the better. The converse is also true: spend time with people whom you admire. Make friends with people who have already achieved what you want to.

This principle is the reason why I believe in the power of a mentor and why I offer mentoring courses to my students. Yes, you can achieve results if you do a course where I teach you how to do something in six weeks. But if you do a year-long mentoring course with me, you will experience what and how I do it daily.

Do you want to have a great marriage? Identify a couple that you think has a great marriage and take them out for dinner. Spend time with them. Learn from them. Ask them questions, but also observe them. Become friends with them. Surround yourself with such people. And you will become like them.

But,?Hannes,?what?about?my?family??I?can’t?choose?them.

Yes, that is true. Many adults experience that when they spend time with their parents and siblings, they fall back into the habits and the thinking that they had when they were children living at home. But, remember, you can take responsibility. You can choose when, where, and how you spend time with your family, even your immediate family. You can choose what your mindset will be when you spend time with them. There might be some family members whom you choose to spend less time with or only at certain times. In extreme circumstances, you might even cut ties completely with some family members.

But you might also be surprised by what happens in certain relationships when you take responsibility. You might become the one who influences them rather than the other way around.

Workbook?Q6.6:?Determine?the?influence?of?your?relationships?on?your?PowerGoal?.

Do?the?exercises?in?the?PowerGoal??Workbook.

For more information on the WCU Powergoal method;